The world and the banking system is one giant rigged game?

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.
It should surprise no one that among the players implicated in this scheme to fix the prices of interest-rate swaps are the same megabanks – including Barclays, UBS, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland – that serve on the Libor panel that sets global interest rates. In fact, in recent years many of these banks have already paid multimillion-dollar settlements for anti-competitive manipulation of one form or another (in addition to Libor, some were caught up in an anti-competitive scheme, detailed in Rolling Stone last year, to rig municipal-debt service auctions). Though the jumble of financial acronyms sounds like gibberish to the layperson, the fact that there may now be price-fixing scandals involving both Libor and ISDAfix suggests a single, giant mushrooming conspiracy of collusion and price-fixing hovering under the ostensibly competitive veneer of Wall Street culture.
The Scam Wall Street Learned From the MafiaWhy? Because Libor already affects the prices of interest-rate swaps, making this a manipulation-on-manipulation situation. If the allegations prove to be right, that will mean that swap customers have been paying for two different layers of price-fixing corruption. If you can imagine paying 20 bucks for a crappy PB&J because some evil cabal of agribusiness companies colluded to fix the prices of both peanuts and peanut butter, you come close to grasping the lunacy of financial markets where both interest rates and interest-rate swaps are being manipulated at the same time, often by the same banks.
"It's a double conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."
The bad news didn't stop with swaps and interest rates. In March, it also came out that two regulators – the CFTC here in the U.S. and the Madrid-based International Organization of Securities Commissions – were spurred by the Libor revelations to investigate the possibility of collusive manipulation of gold and silver prices. "Given the clubby manipulation efforts we saw in Libor benchmarks, I assume other benchmarks – many other benchmarks – are legit areas of inquiry," CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton said.But the biggest shock came out of a federal courtroom at the end of March – though if you follow these matters closely, it may not have been so shocking at all – when a landmark class-action civil lawsuit against the banks for Libor-related offenses was dismissed. In that case, a federal judge accepted the banker-defendants' incredible argument: If cities and towns and other investors lost money because of Libor manipulation, that was their own fault for ever thinking the banks were competing in the first place.
"A farce," was one antitrust lawyer's response to the eyebrow-raising dismissal.
"Incredible," says Sylvia Sokol, an attorney for Constantine Cannon, a firm that specializes in antitrust cases.
All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.
If true, that would leave us living in an era of undisguised, real-world conspiracy, in which the prices of currencies, commodities like gold and silver, even interest rates and the value of money itself, can be and may already have been dictated from above. And those who are doing it can get away with it. Forget the Illuminati – this is the real thing, and it's no secret. You can stare right at it, anytime you want.

Well them playing god with $500 trillion which could sink the planet at any time is a bit unnerving.

Just wait until they decide to get rid of paper money all together. I know I will not be getting a chip implanted in me when the time comes. They will force it on everyone, and anyone who will not get it will be thrown in person. It's coming.

This Libor scandal was big in the financial press, but the news media doesn't like to cover geeky, wonk stuff, so it faded out pretty quick. If one rogue employee did this, the news media would have hammer the person, but since it was institutional as a practice, not much has happened other then don't do it again.

This lending rate under pins almost all debt pricing and the corp elite tried to manipulate the basis. Shouldn't undermining capitalism and the free markets be criminal?

Just wait until they decide to get rid of paper money all together. I know I will not be getting a chip implanted in me when the time comes. They will force it on everyone, and anyone who will not get it will be thrown in person. It's coming.

Illuminati. Anyone who does not believe can laugh all day at me - that's fine. Once you know the truth, it will change you. This modern world is more corrupt than its ever been. The advancement of technlogy has been the greatest tool for Satan in controlling the world the way he does nowadays (Mass Media, Politics).

Your only Salvation is doing some research, accepting the truth for what it is, and highly encourage you to read the world of god. He will open the door, all you just have to do is call his name.

By the way, if you are interested in learning more about this stuff, youtube has great videos with facts created by people who know the truth, it will be hard to deny yourself the truth, unless you are too far gone. Search for the bohemian grove, illuminati media, and related videos (Michael Jackson's death is a good one). Trust me, once you accept the truth and are blinded no more, you will never be the same person again. Wickedness every where........

Illuminati. Anyone who does not believe can laugh all day at me - that's fine. Once you know the truth, it will change you. This modern world is more corrupt than its ever been. The advancement of technlogy has been the greatest tool for Satan in controlling the world the way he does nowadays (Mass Media, Politics).

Your only Salvation is doing some research, accepting the truth for what it is, and highly encourage you to read the world of god. He will open the door, all you just have to do is call his name.

By the way, if you are interested in learning more about this stuff, youtube has great videos with facts created by people who know the truth, it will be hard to deny yourself the truth, unless you are too far gone. Search for the bohemian grove, illuminati media, and related videos (Michael Jackson's death is a good one). Trust me, once you accept the truth and are blinded no more, you will never be the same person again. Wickedness every where........

Illuminati. Anyone who does not believe can laugh all day at me - that's fine. Once you know the truth, it will change you. This modern world is more corrupt than its ever been. The advancement of technlogy has been the greatest tool for Satan in controlling the world the way he does nowadays (Mass Media, Politics).

Your only Salvation is doing some research, accepting the truth for what it is, and highly encourage you to read the world of god. He will open the door, all you just have to do is call his name.

By the way, if you are interested in learning more about this stuff, youtube has great videos with facts created by people who know the truth, it will be hard to deny yourself the truth, unless you are too far gone. Search for the bohemian grove, illuminati media, and related videos (Michael Jackson's death is a good one). Trust me, once you accept the truth and are blinded no more, you will never be the same person again. Wickedness every where........

If youtube holds the keys to knowledge they would just remove those videos...

I don't think you even need to be a conspiracy theorist to know how the world and it's banking system operate.

Just look at the all taxes we pay; what exactly do we receive for all that money we give our governments -- 30-50% of our income + property taxes + vehicle taxes + taxes on everything we buy + tax on services + extortionate taxes on things that are 'bad' for us + healthcare insurance + 'fees' etc etc.

Yet we all blindly pay for it, over and over again. We are cattle. The cost of being human is massively beyond what it should be.

I don't think you even need to be a conspiracy theorist to know how the world and it's banking system operate.

Just look at the all taxes we pay; what exactly do we receive for all that money we give our governments -- 30-50% of our income + property taxes + vehicle taxes + taxes on everything we buy + tax on services + extortionate taxes on things that are 'bad' for us + healthcare insurance + 'fees' etc etc.

Yet we all blindly pay for it, over and over again. We are cattle. The cost of being human is massively beyond what it should be.

The alternative is to be a bum or move somewhere else where the taxes aren't to this level.

The alternative is to be a bum or move somewhere else where the taxes aren't to this level.

We shouldn't have to move away from the problem. We as people need to stop being raped by governments, banks and big corporations. How? I've no idea, and as long as the majority of the population are blind to reality, it's only going to get worse.

It's a really sad prospect, but If they taxed the air we breathe tomorrow, most people would put up and shut up.

I think the tax situation here in Canada is even more out of control, I mean, imagine paying $30 for 12 small import beers. We do.

We shouldn't have to move away from the problem. We as people need to stop being raped by governments, banks and big corporations. How? I've no idea, and as long as the majority of the population are blind to reality, it's only going to get worse.

Agreed but trying to get people to do something about it is impossible so moving is really the only legitimate thing one can do until the whole thing collapses and people come for their heads. Or it doesn't collapse and they just keep taking more and more wealth and this is perpetual. It's likely way too late.

Originally Posted by bigup

I think the tax situation here in Canada is even more out of control, I mean, imagine paying $30 for 12 small import beers. We do.

The problem would be solved if everyone stopped paying their taxes. What are they going to do? Without our money they have no power. And boycott the manipulating corrupted media. But who is going to do this? Nobody!!! Everybody is far too gone. Their agenda is progressing without any hiccups. Sad!!, but thankfully we are just living a temporary life. Judgement day will come eventually for all.